


burial

by edgehog



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Allergies, F/M, Gardens & Gardening, Gen, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-23
Updated: 2018-10-23
Packaged: 2019-08-06 01:08:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16378490
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/edgehog/pseuds/edgehog
Summary: after the duel, he went back to New York.





	burial

In the weeks and years after the duel, the last duel, his last duel, Hamilton completely retires from public life. He’d always promised Eliza that he would do it — sometime — in the hazy future when he had no more goals, when everything was achieved.

There was a time — after Philip — he had thought that he was done. Done with politics, done with arguments. He felt finished. Emptied. Flat.

And he was done dueling, he’d promised that too and he had meant to keep that promise at least. But Burr — and Hamilton couldn’t _help_ himself, Burr was ... he was so ...

 _Burr,_ he thinks. The word is like a frown in his memory, and the memory of Burr’s frown like a word, and Hamilton can’t sort out his thoughts more than this: _Burr,_  and a sort of muted frustration.

Burr.

Weehawken.

They’d shrugged at each other and counted off paces and Hamilton had taken a breath and turned around and before he could raise his arm properly towards the sky, Burr‘s shot was ringing in the air and he felt it pass through his coat — he found the hole afterwards, entrance and exit wounds in the velvet, like Burr had very deep feelings on his (admittedly vain) attire —  
— before he could raise up his arm, the shot rang out. And Burr dropped to his knees.

Hamilton had stood still. His thoughts went in stupid, stunned circles. That wasn’t how — he didn’t know what to — Burr was lying down — he needed to see him —

He had to speak with him.

Pendleton gripped his arm. “Alexander — You must go. Alex, _go_.”

Benumbed, he stumbled where they lead him. It was only afterwards he realized he’d had a choice.

 

Now he kneels in the dirt of the garden his eldest daughter planted years ago, before she forgot it and everything. That was Hamilton’s fault, too. She was numbed, stupid, moving in endless circles around her brother’s name —

He digs into the ground. His knees ache and his hips ache, and a particular space in his ribcage hurts — on the left, around where his heart beats.

 

He had not expected Burr to die.  
It didn’t seem fair. _I didn’t mean to shoot him,_ he says to everyone who will listen. He even meets with Jefferson, whose antipathy towards his vice-president and co-worker was well known, who says: _I sympathize with the urge to kill him, but you’ve put me in a difficult position ..._

The position being: how to pardon Hamilton without looking like he didn’t care about Burr.

 

Eliza sobs when the news comes through; she clings to Hamilton.

He gently pulls her hands away from his coat.

The man calls him “General,” respectfully, as he binds him for the arrest.

 

Hamilton isn’t especially afraid of the trial — for any number of reasons. And he isn’t especially surprised when the jury-trial is cancelled, and a commuted sentance issued — amounting basically to _Keep your nose clean and don’t murder your social betters._

 

So: politics are over.

So: gardening.

He never had luck with it before the — _before_ ; his cabbages all died, rotting in the ground; even his mint disappeared overnight.

Mint was never supposed to die; that’s what they said. He had planted it because they said it was never going to die.

His fingers are dry and stiff with the cold today, they barely cooperate, and it’s hard to distinguish one thing from another by touch, but he knows there are bulbs here somewhere, lost in the ground, tops cut off clean for the winter. He must take them out before the frost.

If they’d dueled in January instead of July, none of this would have happened. He’d have been too frozen to move fast.

Hamilton sniffs.

Allergies.

He touches something hard, hoping — but no. A clod of dirt. More searching, more dirt. Nothing but soil, heavy clay. He keeps looking, eyes shut, trying to find what he cannot see, long-buried now and perhaps lost.


End file.
